Splitting as Segregation in the American Psychoanalytic Institution

Splitting is expressed through segregation in American psychoanalytic institutions.

Segregation does not require formal prohibitions against the membership or involvement of people of color in psychoanalytic institutions; indeed, it persists despite avowed wishes and attempts to recruit a wider membership of color (Malamed, 2022). The ongoing segregation of people of color as other to the discipline is de jure: not in the sense that institutional rules explicitly endorse segregation, but in the sense that nominally race-neutral rules leave the discriminatory and segregating effects of a history of exclusionary practices intact and, I would argue, propped up. To quote a participant in my research team’s recent study on discrimination in psychoanalytic organizations, describing the policies and procedures by which such institutions organize admissions, curriculum, governance, and community: “I think that’s purposefully keeping some communities out” (Carter, 2024).

This insidious splitting, generated by the maintenance of as-if (Deutsch, 1934) neutral policies and procedures about training and credentialing psychoanalysts, is compounded by a psychoanalytic culture and social atmosphere that reliably leads many people of color to want to flee. The most effective, yet plausibly deniable path to segregation is to make an environment horrible for people of color and trust that we will, in Mitt Romney’s phrase, self-deport. To quote another participant from my team’s study: “you know, it’s almost as if you need to know the secret password to be able to be accepted into that community” (Carter, 2024, see also Griffin et al., 2020).

The rules by which these institutions organize themselves – institutional rules, but also cultural and social rules – facilitate splitting that allows the existing power structure to believe that it is fighting segregation when, in fact, it is maintaining it. This, in turn, allows the (mainly white) people who benefit from the existing power structure to disavow their own ambivalent, conflictual split – that they both do and, crucially, do not want more people of color around them, particularly in positions of power and influence.

We have data to support this conclusion. Between the Holmes Commission report (2023) and the findings of my own research team’s study (Carter, 2024), we are able to offer a clear picture of how segregation functions in psychoanalytic institutions. We cannot directly observe the unconscious processes of white institutional leaders, but nor do we need to; we can see the results of their choices in the experiences that people of color report about their efforts to find a place in these institutions.

In the legal and policy-making worlds in which institutional discrimination is studied, prosecuted, and (occasionally) ameliorated, discrimination is understood as a matter of disparate treatment and/or disparate impact. If people of color are subjected to disparate treatment, that is discrimination. If people of color are treated the same way white people are, but that treatment has a disparate impact by virtue of racial difference, that too is discrimination. We have the data to conclude that both disparate treatment and disparate impact are widespread in American psychoanalytic institutions.

What to do? In my view, the answer is, fittingly, to split. I have several different forms of splitting in mind here. The first is splitting in the sense of leaving – when my own institute proved too racist, I split (Carter, 2024). I conclude that abandoning existing psychoanalytic institutions is a vital intervention; they have proven to be too intransigently segregationist to be worth attempting to salvage. We should split, and leave them in the lurch, without our money or our professional service.

Boycott. Divest. Strike.

Of course, the history of psychoanalysis is of aggrieved parties leaving one institute to start another. Consider Kirsner’s account (2009) of the schism that split the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England off of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; a similar split later produced the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, from which many senior members recently split and “returned” to BPSI. This schismatic do-si-do (Carter, 2024) has clearly not solved our problems.

The mistake we have made, repeatedly, is assuming that psychoanalysis needs institutes.

Instead, we should split the functions that psychoanalytic institutes have traditionally served, abandoning some functions and retaining others in different forms. It is not just that we must create something new; it is that we get to create something new. Excitement is warranted!

We should abandon the institute’s credentialing function, its role in defining who and what an analyst is, and minting and certifying people who meet its definition. There is no good evidence indicating that institute credentialing provides meaningful quality control; there is, however, substantial evidence that it is discriminatory, and contributes to institutes and communities that are authoritarian, anaerobic, and abusive. Many of our most learned, influential psychoanalytic thinkers cannot, by institute standards, call themselves psychoanalysts. That is a sorry state of affairs.

Without credentialing, there are no training or supervising analysts. We should abolish these categories outright. They play a clear role in creating structural conditions that produce coercion (Kernberg, 1996, 2000), betrayal (Freyd & Birrell, 2013) sexual boundary violations (Celenza & Gabbard, 2003; Dimen, 2011; Gabbard, 2016; Gabbard & Peltz, 2001; Gentile, 2018; Levin, 2020a, 2020b), racial discrimination (Holmes Commission, 2023; Carter et al., 2023; see also Rao, 2020, and I could go on and on), and a general hostility to dissent and change (Kernberg, 2016), without a clear countervailing benefit. We must split the experience of being in analysis or supervision off from an experience of being “trained.”

What remains of an institute, then? Classes. Community. It is completely possible to maintain nonhierarchical, non-credentialing, cooperative psychoanalytic learning communities, in which classes and other learning opportunities are offered, and professional and intellectual relationships are given space to flourish outside the bizarre webs of relational secrecy that bind psychoanalytic institutes. Entities like the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, Das Unbehagen, and the Asian American Center for Psychoanalysis are exemplars, as are institutions that promote learning arts, crafts, and trades (see also Clough, this issue).

The case for splitting is strong. We can bring to birth a new psychoanalysis from the ashes of the old!